Grunt

The Curious Science of Humans at War

Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries--panic, exhaustion, heat, noise--and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you'll never see our nation's defenders in the same way again.

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I really don't think anything will beat Stiff, but I do love Mary Roach and her writing anyway. Grunt is in turns gritty, informational, funny, off kilter, and somber.

I wish wholeheartedly that she narrated her own audiobooks. I enjoy listening to her talks, and think her wry tone would have translated better than the narrator they used (she was good, but not Mary Roach good).

Some parts left me a bit on the squeamish side, but in any Mary Roach book, there will be something that does. As usual, it was another great blend of unexpected information (MR "rabbit holes" are not the same as my own!), eye openers and humor.

Mary Roach makes me laugh out loud. She asks questions that many are too timid or too embarrassed to ask, and then asks the hanging follow-up questions. She writes up the interviews presenting highly technical information using highly entertaining prose. And the reader gets to benefit.

Roach is a master of making science writing approachable to the layman. While Grunt wasn't my favorite of her books, it was a fascinating look into the research and experiments behind the American military machine. My only regret is that listening to the audiobook, I missed out on all of her great footnotes and had to go back and read them out of context later.

As with the other books by Roach, I found this one hard to put down. Finished it in just a few sittings. Stayed up too late reading one night then the chapter on sleep deprivation inspired me to put the book down and go to bed.

Although the tidbits of fact and scientific information are fascinating, the book devotes way to much print to the attire, appearance, speech, and other irrelevant characteristics of the subjects. The writing style reminds me of the Weekly Reader distributed in fourth through sixth grade classrooms of the 1960s.

I just finished reading Mary Roach's GRUNT and, well, it's all I'll ever need to know about bionic extra-terrestrial penis reconstruction going on in the military. Roach takes what you think is going to be a book about plain old war and opens up the world of military sciences. Fascinating!

When I first read the title, I was worried that this book was about bombs and guns. However, this is certainly not the case. In fact, the closest Mary Roach gets to bombs is a history of the stink bomb. Instead, this is all about the practicalities of humans at war-sleeping, hearing, intestinal distress and proper clothing. The best recommendation I can give is that she made me care about a subject that I never cared about (or even thought about) before.

Once again Ms. Roach does a fantastic job of researching and writing about her chosen topic. I've read all her books, and have found each of them to be excellent. Can't wait to hear what she has coming up next.

Good read on the science of us humans killing and maiming each other. was impressed on the work being done on our wounded warriors, and specific work to rebuild genitals. Handled with taste and no cheap humor, which Roach can do. I'm glad people are working on ways to make our defenders safer and more "comfortable" in their endeavors.